Yes? http://metroid.retropixel.net/games/metroid3/metroid3_map.gif

Notice how there is always one close to each boss.

“Nintendo hard” isn’t about difficulty it is about entire games being based around knowledge checks, like having to remember to pre-swing when you jump particular gaps or get knocked into the gap in og ninja gaiden for instance.

Since when do metroidvanias not have save points right outside boss rooms? That’s been the standard since symphony of the night at least…

I actually said I like the mega man version. I think the dark souls version is boring and doesn’t do anything of what you’re saying. I don’t even remember run backs from when I played half of hollow Knight because I didn’t even think the game was hard. It just wasted time in so many ways that I decided I’d rather play a different game that didn’t, but if people had to deal with the time wasting design that I remember and also do dark souls boss run backs then I’m not surprised they’re irritated.

Edit: and no I don’t think DS would be less iconic if you didn’t have to do boring runs between boss attempts…

The other day, I fought the boss of the abyss in the dark souls 1 dlc. It took me 5ish attempts, and I changed my gear to have more magic resist after I got further in the fight and got merked by magic attacks. All spending 2 minutes between each attempt running back to the fog gate did was make me zone out and wish I could just get right back to it.

Btw, the original runback was mega man, where you get to try the boss until you run out of lives then you have to do the entire level again. Still way more interesting than running past everything in souls games.

I’ll admit I don’t even remember doing runbacks in hollow Knight (or even having to fight any boss in the part of the game I played more than one or twice), but in other games where you have to run to the boss you normally just run past everything without fighting it and go into the boss with full resources. No challenge - just running past everything, which not only wastes time but also totally breaks immersion for me.

In any case, my overall discontent is with all the time wasting added together than any specific thing.

It’s true that I’d prefer it in no games, but it’s also less frustrating in straight soulslikes. The problem with HK is that it is a synthesis of metroidvania and soulslikes in the most time-disrespecting ways possible. Really most of my frustrations are with map design, and then they add not getting maps until you find the map guy (in samey environments I can’t remember well enough without a map).

What made me put it down was playing for an hour going through multiple zones without finding either a map guy or a bench somehow then dying. I’m pretty sure just being able to see the map would have been enough to keep me playing.

For this new fangled soulsvania genre there are numerous better entries that I thoroughly enjoyed. Ender Lilies and Blasphemus are the first 2 that come to mind.

A lot of comments tying runbacks to difficulty, when they have nothing to do with each other. I haven’t playing silksong but I played about half of the original and uninstalled it, despite the fact it is so many people’s favorite metroidvania and metroidvania is one of my favorite genres.

Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty. It is disrespectful of the player’s time, which is a problem hollow Knight was full of.

I suspect the environment is different depending on the game. I never witnessed any of that in overwatch back when I used to play for instance. Though I pretty much never play multiplayer games without at least one friend so the numbers are skewed a bit by having at least 2 non-weirdos on the team

Yeah and a shockingly effective propaganda campaign, and obvious union busting that only gets a slap on the wrist.

Even if you filter out game devs, you seem to think “tech worker” means “silicon valley startup or FAANG”, but the field is much larger than that and the compensation and treatment has never been uniform across the sector.

The majority of the field didn’t get crazy high salaries though (though they mostly did get to actually keep up with the cost of living while others didn’t). Since this is about game devs especially, the benefit they mostly got was getting to do the thing they were passionate about. I don’t remember a time when game developers didn’t have it shitty other than that.

Edit: also big tech companies were doing things like backroom anti poaching deals and other anti worker bullshit, so even the most privileged were getting fucked to some degree

Everyone always makes it sound like everyone else was already in a union and tech workers were snearing at them, but tbh I’m not sure I know a single person that is part of a union in any field. They just aren’t that common in recent history outside of a few specific areas, and everyone is finally seeing the need together. (I would have thought the insane crunch and week long mandatory on call a lot of people deal with in tech would have been enough but apparently it takes the threat of layoffs to get people serious)

only games I like count as games!

Our data centers now consume more power than small cities. While China expands its energy production through whatever source is expedient, we face permitting delays and political scaremongering.

Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. No thanks we need real environmental regulation not even less.

Oh no not the shareholders!

I don’t think steam is perfect, but they have shown over the years they will go above and beyond to make a good experience for the consumer, including tagging all kinds of negative things on games such as specific DRMs and drastically advancing the ability to run windows games on Linux

No publicly traded company will ever develop that kind of track record even if you give it a chance.

That’s cool and all, but the plan is to buy their way in by running at a massive loss then enshittify. Rather, even if that is not the current plan (it probably is), it will inevitably become the plan because it is a publicly traded company.

Even outside of the performance problems, it’s become clear the pattern is to release the base game which is ok, then eventually release an expansion that makes it feel like a complete experience. A lot of people that started with world or rise are just going to hold off for the expansion

This is a good callout. If enigma is still an always online DRM that’s still a dealbreaker for me. Will have to check

It’s old lunacy. Believe it or not we live in a class based society where the vast majority of the people that actually provide value to society have their labor stolen by leeches that make money by having money and that is what that person means by the investor class.

I didn’t even look at it enough to know if I’d buy it otherwise when I saw it has denuvo. Always online DRM is a hard pass for me. I haven’t played the last 3 games Atlus released either and I’ve been playing almost every one since the ps2 era.

I was excited until they put real people in it. So they lost at least one sale trying to mainstream it (and probably paid out the nose to do so)

Something people may not realize is that the deck serves as a target system for developers of pc games. Obviously at some point a new target makes sense, but there is a careful balance in release frequency if that target status is to be maintained.

For instance you mention steam deck verified - when steam deck 2 comes out, does steam deck verified get bifurcated where a game can get certified for either system separately? Does it just reference steam deck 2 at that point? Not easy questions

I would be surprised of that was the case. Valve said they wouldn’t release another one until there was a generational improvement and I don’t think we’re there.

VR headsets are still niche, and a lot of people find them uncomfortable for long sessions and/or get nauseous using them.

Direct input existed before xinput and works just fine

I could never understand why microsoft is so against local user account. There’s a similar freedom from corporate fuckery when using Linux and everyone is ok with that.

I’m those cases isn’t it because they had separate hardware built in for backwards compat? This is more of a PC style hardware upgrade rather than totally different hardware (compute wise) so it might be different for that reason?

You’re extrapolating to “forever”. I just want to reduce e-waste by not forcing people to get new computers they don’t want or need yet. Every year of additional service life, more people upgrade hardware for other reasons.

Because of the sheer amount of e-waste it will generate by force-decommissioning hardware in active usage. Don’t know why that’s so hard to understand.

Targeted ads are obviously way more effective and therefore generate more money. But it’s not the only way.

I’m not so sure this has turned out to be all that true